


Two Evenings

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 20:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: Mulder and Scully's grown daughter spends one evening with her brother and another with her parents.





	Two Evenings

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

They’re starting to eat dinner when the buzzer goes.  “Are we expecting anyone?” Susanna asks.  Julia shakes her head, but Susanna already has a feeling about who it is, even before she goes over and presses TALK.  “Hello?”

“Hey, kid, it’s me,” comes the expected voice.  “Can I come up?”

“Hey, Jackson!” she says.  “Sure, of course.  Fifth floor to the right.”  It’s probably unnecessary to tell him that, since he somehow already knows her address and apartment number.  She presses the button to buzz him in and then turns back to Julia.  “My brother,” she says, also unnecessarily.  Julia nods, and Susanna goes to open the door. 

“Wow,” Jackson says, when he appears after a few minutes.  “Lots of stairs.”

“Hey, we get what we pay for,” Susanna says.  “We’re poor grad students, remember?”  She stretches up to hug him, and he hugs her back.  “Why don’t you ever tell me things?”

“Things?” he says.  “What things?”

“Like if you’re going to be in town,” she says.  “We could have made plans.”

“Well, I’m here now,” he points out, and she can’t really argue with that.  She knows, by this point, that she’s not going to be able to pin him down any more than this.  “Are you guys having dinner?  Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he adds, coming further into the apartment as Susanna closes the door.

“We just started,” she says.  “Julia made lasagna.  There’s plenty.”

“Sounds awesome,” Jackson says.  He takes a seat at the table.  “Hey, Julia.  How’re you doing?”

“I’m all right,” Julia says.  She takes a bite of her lasagna.  Susanna glances between them.  Her girlfriend has met her brother twice before and doesn’t, as far as she can tell, really like him.  Probably because he does things like randomly show up at their apartment and eat their lasagna.

“This place is nice,” Jackson says, as they eat.  “Better than your last one.”

“Yeah, much,” Susanna says.  “We got lucky.”

“Too much information.”

“Jerk,” she says, swatting in his direction with the spatula.  “You know what I mean.  Hopefully we’ll be here for a couple of years.”

“That’d be good,” Jackson says; looking at the way he nods, Susanna could almost believe he has some familiarity with the concept of stability.  “And how’re your classes going?  Is the TA thing getting easier?”

She’s told him about this, about how nervous she was on the first day she had to stand up and take charge of a group of undergrads.  “They’re really good.  I’m taking this awesome Orson Welles class.  And yeah, it’s gotten a lot better.  Grading’s a pain, though.  There are some rough papers.”

“I bet you whip them into shape, though,” Jackson says.  He grins at her.  He looks like their dad.

“You bet,” she says, smiling back.  “How about you?  How long are you here for?”

A noncommittal gesture.  “Not sure yet.  We’ll have to see.”

“Are you still at the ranch or…?”  She lets the sentence trail off.  Last time she talked to him, earlier this month, he was working at a ranch in Arizona.  The latest in a long string of places.

He shakes his head.  “No, I left last week.  You know how it is.”  In a way, she thinks she does.

Jackson insists on doing the dishes for them, which even gets a smile from Julia.  “Do you want to watch a movie?” he asks Susanna.  “Or is that too much like schoolwork for you now?”

“No, it’s cool,” she says.  “We should do that.  What about you, Julia?”

“I’ve got to finish some reading,” Julia says.  “The two of you go ahead, though, babe.  I’ll go in our room.”  She closes the last cabinet door, kisses Susanna quickly, and heads into the bedroom.

“Come on,” Susanna says to Jackson.  “Let’s pick something.  I’ll show you what I have.” 

They go through her collection; she still has shelves full of DVDs, doesn’t care if they’re out of style.  It’s got to be a horror movie, because that’s always been their thing, the two of them.  So many of her memories involve this.  Him showing her _Carrie_ when she was seven and he was twenty-four; she loved it, even if, in retrospect, she doesn’t know what the hell he was thinking.  Waiting in line for hours for the midnight showing of the _Silence of the Lambs_ remake when she was in high school and then trashing the hell out of it in an all-night diner until the manager came over and told them to keep their voices down.  _The Exorcist_ with their mom, curled up on the couch one rainy Halloween night, one of the times when he was staying with them.  Her favorite is _Eyes Without a Face_.  His is _The Others_.  They both have a soft spot for _The Wicker Man_ , and that ends up being tonight’s choice.  They could go for something new, but right now it feels like a time for the familiar. 

They don’t talk during movies—that’s not their style—so they sit quietly beside each other on the couch for the next eighty-seven minutes, getting pleasantly spooked by the familiar scenes.  Even when it’s over, they stay quiet for a few minutes, just exchanging smiles, and it’s not until she’s taking the DVD out of the player that he breaks the silence.  “Hey, Susanna.  How’s…how’s everybody?”

The vaguest sounding question in the world, but she knows how to answer.  “Mom and Dad are good,” she says.  “They’ve both been writing a lot.  And they went to St. Louis last month—Mom was speaking at a conference.  It sounds like they had a really good time.  You know how they are about traveling.”

“Yeah,” he says. 

“They’re talking about maybe taking a big trip later this year,” she says.  “Especially since they decided not to get another dog.”

Jackson nods.  “I’m sorry about Pip.”

“Yeah,” Susanna says.  “She had a good life, though.”  She puts _The Wicker Man_ back on the shelf and runs her finger along the DVDs.  “But yeah, they’re talking about Europe, maybe.  In the summer.  I might go with them.”  She hesitates, not sure how much to say.  “Like a family thing,” she finally says, hoping he’ll understand he’s included in that, if he’s interested.  He won’t be, she doesn’t think.  But still.

All he says is, “Sounds like fun.”

“Actually, they’re coming to visit me next week,” Susanna says.  That’s smaller-scale, easier to handle.  “Will you still be here?”

He’s quiet for a long time.  “I don’t know.”

Her role isn’t to push these things.  She gets sheets and a pillow from the hall closet, and they make up the couch together.  Then she goes into her own room.  Julia’s already in bed, reading, and when Susanna gets into her pajamas and joins her, she reaches out a hand to squeeze Susanna’s.  Susanna squeezes back.

 

Her parents haven’t seen the apartment yet, and Susanna wants it to look its best.  Julia helps her sweep and dust and arrange their books and papers in a somewhat less disorderly fashion.  “You think it’s all right now?” Julia asks, casting a critical eye at the stacks of papers on the windowsill.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Susanna says.  “You’ve seen our house.”

“True,” Julia says.  She smiles.  “Should we get dinner started?”

They make roast chicken with vegetables—it’s not particularly complicated, but it’s real food, at least, something she can give her parents (her dinner repertoire is more microwave-based than she’d like to admit).  It’s in the oven, almost done cooking, when the buzzer goes.  Susanna hits the button to buzz them in on her way to put plates on the table.

“So many stairs!” her dad says when they appear, but he’s smiling as he says it, so that’s okay. 

“That’s what everyone says,” she tells him.  “Even the movers complained.”  She hugs him as he stoops to kiss her cheek, exchanges hugs with her mom as well.  “Come on in,” she says, leading them into the apartment.  “We’re just making dinner.  It’ll be done soon.”

“Wow, it looks great,” her mom says, casting an eye around the apartment.  “You’ve done a really good job putting it all together.”

“Thanks,” Susanna says.  She’s beaming, she knows; her apartment décor is not that important, in the grand scheme of things, but she likes them to be proud of her. 

“How are you, Julia?” her mom asks.  “It’s been a while.”

“I’m doing well,” Julia says.  “It’s really nice to see you both again.”

“Nice to see you too,” her dad says.  “Want to give us the tour, Susanna?” 

The tour doesn’t take long—it’s a small place—but they appreciatively eye the view from the living room window and cast knowing looks at the teetering pile of books next to the bed.  “You’re your father’s daughter,” her mom says, and her dad smiles at that and ruffles her hair.

The rest of the ten minutes until the chicken is ready are occupied in finishing setting the table, insisting to her parents that no, they don’t have to help, and asking them how their trip went—it was uneventful, her dad says, an easy flight.  When they’re settled around the table, they ask about her, and she catches them up on what’s going on with her classes.  “I’m starting to think about my papers already,” she says.  “I want to do something about _Macbeth_ , how he shoots the crowd scenes.  Not sure exactly what yet, though.”  She passes her mom the salad.  “Oh, and Tom, my advisor?  He wants to start a department softball team.”

“And I say good luck getting a bunch of nerds with traumatic memories of middle school gym to buy into that,” Julia puts in.  Her dad snorts.

“Yeah,” Susanna admits.  “I said I’d play.  But so far, I’m the only one who’s interested.  We’ll see if it goes anywhere.”  She takes another piece of chicken.  “I think it would be kind of fun to play again.”

“Sure, why not?” her dad says.  “You were great at it.”  She was pretty good, shortstop all through high school.  Her parents always in the stands.

“He’s trying to think of a catchy name for the team, too,” she says.  “So far his best one is the Projectionists.”

“That’s not bad,” her mom says.

“Well, I’m glad no one’s trying to start a team in the history department,” Julia says.  “I wonder what our name would be, though.  Materialists?  Periodisers?”

“Not sure what you wanted that to sound like,” Susanna tells her, “but I don’t think you got there.” 

Julia laughs.  “I’ll keep thinking.”

“And how’s your work going, Julia?” her mom asks.  Julia talks about her classes, and her parents ask questions, and Susanna leans in a little and watches them, the people she loves talking to each other.

There’s something else she knows she should talk to her parents about, but she waits until they’re done with dinner; Julia has a laundromat run to make, and it’s just the three of them sitting in the living room.  “Jackson was here,” she says.  “Last week.”  A little abrupt, she knows, but she can’t think of any other way of introducing the topic.  Anyway, her parents wouldn’t like it if she treated them like they were fragile.

Her mom looks up.  “Oh?”  Her voice is calm enough.  “How’s he doing?”

“He seems okay,” Susanna says.  “He left the ranch.”

“Do you know why?” her dad asks.

“Not in particular,” Susanna says.  “I think it’s just the usual Jackson stuff, honestly.  I’m not worried about him or anything.”

“What’s going on with him and Lucy?” her mom asks.  The elusive Lucy: none of them have ever met her, but she and Jackson have had a relationship with more ups and downs than most major entertainment franchises.

“They’re together at the moment,” Susanna says.  “But she’s visiting her mom in Boulder.”

“Her mom lives in Boulder?” her dad asks.  “I thought she was from Portland, for some reason.”

“Yeah, you know, I thought that too,” Susanna says.  “Maybe they moved?”

“She was definitely from Portland,” her mom says, “at some point.”  She shrugs, and Susanna’s dad shrugs too; they catch each other’s eye and laugh.  “How long was he here for?” she asks.

“About five days,” Susanna says.  “He stayed with us.  I didn’t know he was coming or anything.” 

“Did you guys have a good time?” her dad asks.

She nods.  “It was pretty low-key,” she says.  “We did our usual thing.  Watched a bunch of horror movies.  And then we went to one of those tourist stores and tried to find the ugliest souvenirs.”

“And he left…?” her mom asks.

“Three days ago,” she says.  She doesn’t tell them that it was by choice, that it wasn’t because he had an urgent commitment somewhere else.  She doesn’t think that’s necessary.  They nod at her words.  She wouldn’t say they look sad, exactly, just solemn.  “But he said he’d call sometime while you’re here, so we can all talk.”

That makes them both smile.  “That sounds great,” her dad says.  “Really great.”

“I’m glad the two of you got to see each other,” her mom adds, and Susanna knows she means it.  She is glad, glad that the two of them have something that’s weird and unlike what any of her friends have with their siblings and yet somehow markedly less complicated than what Jackson has with their parents.  She’s glad that there’s that.

“It was fun,” she says simply, because that’s the truth of it.  They sit for a moment, and then, because she doesn’t want tonight to be too bittersweet, she adds, “So did I tell you about what happened in my section on Monday?  We were talking about _Bonnie and Clyde_ , and the discussion almost got more violent than the movie.”

They listen, laugh at her story, smile in commiseration.  It’s getting late, and she knows they’ll go back to the hotel soon, but right now she feels so at ease. 


End file.
